When in Russia, you have only one job. Don't grab anybody's pu**y. And Donald Trump couldn't do it. Allegedly. According to a dossier compiled by a former British intelligence operative who specialized in Russian affairs. From information provided by Russian sources. Americans, including the media, haven't nailed down the information yet, but U.S. intelligence takes it seriously enough to brief the president -- and the president-elect -- on it.
ACCORDING to the man who will lead this country and literally hold your life in his pu**y-grabbing mitts (cough, nuclear codes, cough),the media reports on this are "FAKE NEWS - A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!" But in your heart, you know it's probably true, right? Because that's who Donald Trump really is, right? Donald Trump, it seems to me, is something else, too -- the purest expression today of American popular culture and its core values. He was a "reality-TV" star, a best-selling "author," the subject of constant attention, fascination and emulation. Then we elected him president because he's Donald F***ing Trump, who Tells It Like It Is and will Make America Great Again. The only thing Trump will make America is Amerika. In doing so, he and our new Russian overlords will have hung us with out own immoral, dysfunctional rope.
What do you get when you elect an authoritarian, racist, misogynist, vulgarian bullshit artist as President of the United States? A steady stream of authoritarian, racist, misogynist, vulgarian bullshit from the future President of the United States. Starting with this:
Lesley Stahl: You said that lobbyists owned politicians because they give them money.
Donald Trump: Yeah.
Lesley Stahl: You admitted you used to do it yourself. You have a transition team—
Donald Trump: And when you say lobbyists, lobbyists and special interests.
Lesley Stahl: And you want to get rid of all of that?
Donald Trump: I don’t like it, no.
Lesley Stahl: You don’t like it, but your own transition team, it’s filled with lobbyists.
Donald Trump: That’s the only people you have down there.
Lesley Stahl: You have lobbyists from Verizon, you have lobbyists from the oil gas industry, you have food lobby.
Donald Trump: Sure. Everybody’s a lobbyist down there--
Lesley Stahl: Well, wait
Donald Trump: That’s what they are. They’re lobbyists or special interests—
Lesley Stahl: On your own transition team.
Donald Trump:–we are trying to clean up Washington. Look--
Lesley Stahl: How can you claim--
Donald Trump: Everything, everything down there-- there are no people-- there are all people that work -- that’s the problem with the system, the system. Right now, we’re going to clean it up. We’re having restrictions on foreign money coming in, we’re going to put on term limits, which a lot of people aren’t happy about, but we’re putting on term limits. We’re doing a lot of things to clean up the system. But everybody that works for government, they then leave government and they become a lobbyist, essentially. I mean, the whole place is one big lobbyist.
Lesley Stahl: But you’re, but you’re basically saying you have to rely on them, even though you want to get rid of them?
Donald Trump: I’m saying that they know the system right now, but we’re going to phase that out. You have to phase it out.
AND CONTINUING with this:
Lesley Stahl: Are you in any way intimidated, scared about this enormous burden, the gravity of what you’re taking on? Donald Trump: No. Lesley Stahl: Not at all? Donald Trump: I respect it. But I’m not scared by it. Lesley Stahl: Now you’re not scared, but there are people, Americans, who are scared and some of them are demonstrating right now, demonstrating against you, against your rhetoric-- Donald Trump: That’s only because they don’t know me. I really believe that’s only because-- Lesley Stahl: Well, they listened to you in the campaign and that’s-- Donald Trump: I just don’t think they know me. Lesley Stahl: Well, what do you think they’re demonstrating against? Donald Trump: Well, I think in some cases, you have professional protesters. And we had it-- if you look at WikiLeaks, we had-- Lesley Stahl: You think those people down there are— Donald Trump: Well Lesley— Lesley Stahl: are professional? Donald Trump: Oh, I think some of them will be professional, yeah-- Lesley Stahl: OK, but what about – they’re in every city. Lesley Stahl: When they demonstrate against you and there are signs out there, I mean, don’t you say to yourself, I guess you don’t, you know, do I have to worry about this? Do I have to go out and assuage them? Do I have to tell them not to be afraid? They’re afraid. Donald Trump: I would tell them don’t be afraid, absolutely. Lesley Stahl: But that’s not what you’re saying, I said it- Donald Trump: Oh, I think, no, no, I think-- I am saying it, I’ve been saying it. Lesley Stahl: OK. Donald Trump: Don’t be afraid. We are going to bring our country back. But certainly, don’t be afraid. You know, we just had an election and sort of like you have to be given a little time. I mean, people are protesting. If Hillary had won and if my people went out and protested, everybody would say, “Oh, that’s a terrible thing.” And it would have been a much different attitude. There is a different attitude. You know, there is a double standard here. It has been five full days since the election and anti-Trump demonstrations, driven in part by Hillary Clinton’s edge in the popular vote, have been significant. When we interviewed him on Friday afternoon Mr. Trump said he had not heard about some of the acts of violence that are popping up in his name… or against his supporters. Nor he said had he heard about reports of racial slurs and personal threats against African Americans, Latinos and gays by some of his supporters. Donald Trump: I am very surprised to hear that-- I hate to hear that, I mean I hate to hear that-- Lesley Stahl: But you do hear it? Donald Trump: I don’t hear it—I saw, I saw one or two instances… Lesley Stahl: On social media? Donald Trump: But I think it’s a very small amount. Again, I think it’s-- Lesley Stahl: Do you want to say anything to those people? Donald Trump: I would say don’t do it, that’s terrible, ‘cause I’m gonna bring this country together. Lesley Stahl: They’re harassing Latinos, Muslims-- Donald Trump: I am so saddened to hear that. And I say, “Stop it.” If it-- if it helps. I will say this, and I will say right to the cameras: Stop it.
IT'S GOING to be a long four years. Assuming Trump, or the United States, makes it that long.
Somewhere in Bumf****, Fla., there's a principal who apparently isn't obsessed with where one half of 1 percent of the American population gets to pee.
Unfortunately, he is obsessed with using authoritarianism to foster Americanism among his students. In other words, "Love your country . . . or else." A story Wednesday from WBBH television in Fort Myers proves that you can't make this stuff up:
A Collier County principal is requiring students to stand during the national anthem at school events or face ejection.
Lely High School Principal Ryan Nemeth told students during video announcements they'll be ejected from school sporting events if they refuse to stand for "The Star-Spangled Banner."
Nemeth told students the issue is very important to him, and the policy applies to students at all school-sponsored sporting events.
"You will stand, and you will stay quiet. If you don't.. you are going to be sent home, and you're not going to have a refund of your ticket price," he told them.
NEVER MIND that respect -- or love -- coming at the barrel of a gun (or the threat of being kicked out of a football game) isn't. What it is, is a lie. A Potemkin pledge. It is standing for nothing before a national symbol that half-assed dictators have turned into full-fledged idolatry.
The only legitimately American response to a half-witted, authoritarian bully like a certain Florida principal is to quite deliberately, ostentatiously and quietly sit during the Star-Spangled Banner.
"Over a decade ago, Chief Justice [Charles Evans] Hughes led this Court in holding that the display of a red flag as a symbol of opposition by peaceful and legal means to organized government was protected by the free speech guaranties of the Constitution," Justice Robert Jackson wrote for the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1943 when it decided West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnett.
Here, it is the State that employs a flag as a symbol of adherence to government as presently organized. It requires the individual to communicate by word and sign his acceptance of the political ideas it thus bespeaks. Objection to this form of communication, when coerced, is an old one, well known to the framers of the Bill of Rights.
It is also to be noted that the compulsory flag salute and pledge requires affirmation of a belief and an attitude of mind. It is not clear whether the regulation contemplates that pupils forgo any contrary convictions of their own and become unwilling converts to the prescribed ceremony, or whether it will be acceptable if they simulate assent by words without belief, and by a gesture barren of meaning. It is now a commonplace that censorship or suppression of expression of opinion is tolerated by our Constitution only when the expression presents a clear and present danger of action of a kind the State is empowered to prevent and punish. It would seem that involuntary affirmation could be commanded only on even more immediate and urgent grounds than silence. But here, the power of compulsion is invoked without any allegation that remaining passive during a flag salute ritual creates a clear and present danger that would justify an effort even to muffle expression. To sustain the compulsory flag salute, we are required to say that a Bill of Rights which guards the individual's right to speak his own mind left it open to public authorities to compel him to utter what is not in his mind.
REMEMBER, this ruling came in the middle of World War II. The justice continued:
Government of limited power need not be anemic government. Assurance that rights are secure tends to diminish fear and jealousy of strong government, and, by making us feel safe to live under it, makes for its better support. Without promise of a limiting Bill of Rights, it is doubtful if our Constitution could have mustered enough strength to enable its ratification. To enforce those rights today is not to choose weak government over strong government. It is only to adhere as a means of strength to individual freedom of mind in preference to officially disciplined uniformity for which history indicates a disappointing and disastrous end.
The subject now before us exemplifies this principle. Free public education, if faithful to the ideal of secular instruction and political neutrality, will not be partisan or enemy of any class, creed, party, or faction. If it is to impose any ideological discipline, however, each party or denomination must seek to control, or, failing that, to weaken, the influence of the educational system. Observance of the limitations of the Constitution will not weaken government in the field appropriate for its exercise.
2. It was also considered in the Gobitis case that functions of educational officers in States, counties and school districts were such that to interfere with their authority "would in effect make us the school board for the country."
The Fourteenth Amendment, as now applied to the States, protects the citizen against the State itself and all of its creatures -- Boards of Education not excepted. These have, of course, important, delicate, and highly discretionary functions, but none that they may not perform within the limits of the Bill of Rights. That they are educating the young for citizenship is reason for scrupulous protection of Constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes.
WELL, this is the Age of Trump, and I suppose it's more likely than not that "to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes" is exactly what people want out of public education today. This is precisely why we have a Bill of Rights. Perhaps it's not so much to protect us from an abusive government but, instead, to protect us from ourselves.
Language of fascists, racists and morons in this video definitely NSFW
IN TRUMP'S AMERIKA, the above video displays what "love of country" comes to when severed completely from any understanding of human dignity or the principles at the core of the American republic. It is the principles that underlie the Bill of Rights (and the Fourteenth Amendment) that define the United States of America. Not race, not region, not class, not ethnicity and not religious affiliation, but those principles define what it means to be American. And whether we're talking about half-witted, racist vulgarians in Massachusetts or authoritarian school principals in Florida, that shared contempt for those tenets that define us as Americans call into question the loyalty of those making "patriotism" such an issue in the first place. Traitors are as traitors do. HAT TIP: Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker.
“I put lipstick on a pig.I feel a deep sense of remorse that I contributed to presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is. I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.”
If at first, going behind your governor's back to try to broker a flim-flam scam with Iraq doesn't succeed in bringing instant riches to your bankrupt Third Worldish state, fire your state museum's well-regarded director and go for eBay instead. Most places, folks would call that some insane s***. In Louisiana, that's just called another day in the lieutenant governor's office.
Tucked inside an unmarked, nondescript corner building on Chartres Street in the French Quarter are hundreds of thousands of carefully cataloged artifacts spanning more than three centuries of Louisiana’s cultural heritage. The Louisiana State Museum system, with five nearby facilities that are open to the public, uses the four-story, climate-controlled storage facility to house the rest of its vast collection of historical records, gilt-framed paintings, period clothing and other artifacts that date back as far as Louisiana’s colonial days.
As state lawmakers have grappled with an estimated $600 million shortfall in next year’s budget, the museum system’s financial picture appeared bleak — an initially scheduled 37 percent drop in its state appropriation on top of years of funding cuts that left the museum system with its lowest budget and smallest staff in more than a decade.
Nungesser
After six months on the job, Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser has been looking for ways to cut costs and raise revenue for the museum. One idea he’s exploring: selling the system’s storage building, which sits on 7,700 square feet of prime French Quarter real estate, and some of its more than 400,000 artifacts — those that are deemed to be of limited value.
“Why are we storing art in the middle of the French Quarter in such a valuable building?” Nungesser said. “That’s such an expensive building to maintain. I’d much rather see that cost going into maintaining and improving our museums.”
YOU JUST KNOW that Billy Nungesser is going to bring the same common sense, expertise and attention to detail that he did in his James Bond mission to do a world-class deal with a shady go-between to realize riches for Louisiana by refining Iraqi oil and building Iraqi supertankers to transport it.
One small detail slipped by Nungesser, though. Nobody in authority in Washington or Baghdad knew what the hell he was talking about. Oops. But this museum deal will work out a lot better, just trust him. And besides, he's learned his lesson about doing sketchy stuff behind the backs of folks who need to know:
A former two-term president of Plaquemines Parish, Nungesser was elected lieutenant governor last fall and took office in January. By law, the lieutenant governor oversees the Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, which includes the Louisiana State Museum — a system that includes museums in New Orleans, Baton Rouge and other cities.
Last month, Nungesser dismissed the system’s director, Mark Tullos, a Baton Rouge native who took over in 2013.
In interviews, several board members — who declined to comment on the record — said they were surprised to learn about Tullos’ departure only after the fact. They saw Tullos as a decent guy who held the system together despite steep budget cuts and additional challenges, like last year’s mold outbreak at the 1850 House — a house museum that is part of the Lower Pontalba Building — and the collections building.
Nungesser was vague about why he fired Tullos, but he said museum leaders didn’t have a well-thought-out budget and seemingly “just went from one fire to another fire.”
“Not that Mark didn’t do his best job, but we needed — you’ve got to have somebody at the top setting the rules, the goals and what’s expected of people,” Nungesser said.
UH . . . just do what Nungesser says, because lieutenant governor. Really, this'll work. Just ask Nungesser's predecessor, Jay Dardenne, who's now Gov. John Bel Edwards' commissioner of administration, who described selling the storage building . . . as an iffy proposition.. “If — it’s a big if — but if that building were sold, it would have to be declared surplus," he said, "and there’s a statutory scheme that governs what would happen.” In other words, the money wouldn't go to the state museum; it would go into the general fund of a state that has bigger problems than raising money to run the state museum. Uh . . . what does Dardenne know? People say he's a RINO anyway -- a Republican in name only. He's probably not even voting for Trump. No, we need to talk to an expert. Yeah, that's the ticket.
But if he wants to start listing items from the collection on eBay, he’s going to have a hard time convincing [longtime museum-board member Rosemary] Ewing.
“If it’s valuable on eBay, it’s valuable to us, too,” said Ewing .
Ewing was part of the board that hired Tullos. She “thought he did a really good job” and would have appreciated a heads-up that he was being dismissed.
Others once involved with the museum contend that Baton Rouge politics plays an outsized role in the system’s management.
“I’ve been a director at five different institutions, including the Louisiana State Museum, and it’s the only place that I’ve ever worked where there was incredibly and completely unprofessional interference in the day-to-day operation of the museum,” said David Kahn, who now is executive director of the Adirondack Museum in New York.
Kahn was forced out of the local director’s job by then-Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, who pushed for legislation giving him the power to hire and fire the director. Not long afterward, he forced out Kahn, who had been hired two years earlier.
(snip)
On the surface, Kahn said, selling the warehouse building is feasible. He recalled ill-fated incidents involving Formosan termite swarms and a fire years ago in a first-floor restaurant, Irene’s Cuisine. The museum recently told Irene’s its lease will not be renewed after 2018.
But such a sale, others say, may offer only a short-term solution.
“We may sell this place, but we’ve still got four stories of collections that we’re going to have to save and store somewhere,” Ewing said. “You don’t (display) everything all the time. You rotate it. That’s the attraction of a museum.”
WHAT the hell do they know?
Yes, it is good that the good people of Louisiana have a lieutenant governor who sweats the details. Oh, wait. Maybe he just sweats.
When the Nazis did propaganda, at least they did it with a certain panache.
I think of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will here. Yes, it was morally toxic propaganda for Nazi Germany, but it also was artistic toxic propaganda for Nazi Germany.
Now we come to morally toxic propaganda for the National Rifle Association, as conceived by . . . Charlie Daniels. (What? The devil went down to Fairfax?) Whereas Triumph des Willens put the world on notice that Germany was back, Germany was united and Germany would mess you up -- Danke, mein Führer! -- Charlie looks more like . . . how should I put this? Perhaps (and I out myself as the kind of commie pinko fag that Charlie don't cotton to by my use of the word "perhaps") the NRA's Triumph des Schmucks could best be described merely by asking you to hold my beer before exhorting a restless nation "Hey, y'all! Watch this!"
THEN INSERT random slurs about your "Muslin" president (He ain't mine!) and pointy-headed lib'ruls, all the while you're picking a fight with the Iranians, because . . . Iranians!
The overall effect? God, we're a bunch of violent, overarmed, redneck dumbf***s! Wanna fight?
In this Age of Trump, it is cold comfort, I suppose, to consider that while this bunch of schmucks has the potential to cry havoc, it has neither the smarts nor des Willens to triumph. If this be der neuen Amerika, our self-destruction will be the world's reprieve.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Republican Party makes me sick.
If you are a member of the GOP -- particularly the Nebraska Republican Party -- be aware this is what you have signed onto, basically the Full Trump. The Full Trump is what used to be known as fascist nativism . . . or nativist fascism . . . or your basic collection of nuts, cranks, xenophobes and bigots. And here's the thing: I'm sure the picture painted today in the Omaha World-Herald probably would be even uglier elsewhere. Let me caution you; if Christianity for you is more than a mere identity, and if Americanism encompasses real philosophical propositions, this is going to make your blood boil. It did mine.
U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse has carved out a name for himself on the national stage as a leader in the “Never Trump” Republican faction.
On the home front, however, the Nebraska freshman found himself rebuked Saturday by party loyalists upset at his call for a third candidate to arise and give conservatives such as himself an alternative to Donald Trump in the fall election.
Delegates at the State Republican Convention overwhelmingly passed a resolution opposing Sasse’s call for a third candidate. They argued it would only help Democrats win the White House in November.
“If you support a third-party candidate, you are going to elect Hillary Clinton, and she is going to nominate the next three or four members of the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Pat McPherson, an Omaha Republican.
The delegates also went one step further in making clear they were lining up behind Trump. They roundly rejected a counterresolution that sought to condemn the presumptive GOP presidential nominee for making “degrading” comments toward women and minorities. (The resolution was submitted by people who opposed the earlier resolution.)
One Republican said it was not their place to be the “thought police” in this presidential election.
(snip)
They adopted one resolution calling for a state law that would require a transgender person to use a bathroom that corresponds with the gender on his or her birth certificate. They passed another to oppose the relocation of refugees into America. “I’m a foreigner in my own country,” one man said in support of the resolution.
WHAT IS the difference between, say, the National Front in France -- the old, undiluted National Front and not Marine Le Pen's prettied-up version -- and the Republican Party in Nebraska? Precious little. That has been made clear. Actually, "Omaha Republican" Pat McPherson made that pretty clear last year, pre-Trump.
Once, the Republican Party was the Party of Lincoln. What's incomprehensible is that it jettisoned that noble pedigree, just to become the party of Donald Trump and Officer Mancuso.
Once upon a time, my wife and I were sitting down to Sunday dinner at my parents' in Baton Rouge. It was Labor Day weekend, and the Jerry Lewis MDA telethon was on the Magnavox in the living room.
I always was fond of the Jerry Lewis telethon, and I'd always call in to make a donation. Sitting there at the table, I think I made the mistake of asking my old man -- not a fan -- whether he was going to contribute. What followed was a seemingly deranged rant about people in wheelchairs who were armed to the teeth and ready to commit Swiss cheese against the rest of us. The missus and I weren't as good at the poker face then as we are now. In other words, we burst out laughing. Trouble is, the old man was serious, and now he was really pissed. "You might have book learnin'," he thundered, "but I got common sense!" And then he didn't speak to us for weeks.
SO WHAT did I immediately think when I saw the latest bit of "Are you f***ing kidding me?" from former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (a.k.a., Gunga Spin, or the Destroyer of Louisiana or any number of unprintable epithets) regarding der Comb-Over? You got it. "He may have book learnin', but I got common sense!" Thanks a lot, Bobby. But at least I do have common sense enough that -- if I were that sorry sack of s*** (the Jindal sorry sack of s***, not the Donald Trump sorry sack of s***) -- I would just hide in a deep hole somewhere and not say anything. I do think I'd possess enough self-awareness not towrite an op-edin the Wall Street Freakin' Journal saying I was going to vote for a guy I once called "a madman who must be stopped." The Republican Party deserves every horrible thing that's going to happen to it. But for Gunga Spin, every horrible thing wouldn't be nearly enough.
Can't we Americans get any damned thing straight anymore? Then again, if newsroom staffers at metropolitan dailies can't be expected to know the difference between "they're," "there" and "their," why should we suddenly become competent at politics? Or anything else, actually. Joe the Plumber isn't getting paid to understand political science. People at newspapers, on the other hand, are paid to know the King's English -- or at least they used to be.
Cap, this right here is why Steve Harvey is hosting Family Feud. And you ain't. It's the worst contestant in the history of television game shows giving the worst answer, and then a worser answer, and then back to the first worst answer, and then the worser one again . . . and they're all answers that have been given already.
Oh, Lord have mercy, if that had been me, I would have burned my face off in a klieg light, while sticking a fork into a 220-volt outlet. While standing in a tub of water . . . I'd want to make sure.
And Steve turns it all into comedic gold . . . most of which will be edited out of the final program. Enjoy.
Public policy in education has come to this in Louisiana -- and too much of the rest of America.
What is "this"? "This" is a Brookings Institute report on research showing students who "win" Louisiana's school-voucher lottery and escape their "failing" public schools . . . lose. Big time.
From Brookings:
The affected students had won a voucher to attend, at no cost, a private school in Louisiana. Nineteen states have such voucher programs, with Louisiana’s the fifth-largest in the country. The vouchers, averaging $5,311 per student, must be accepted as full tuition at the private schools that participate in the program; schools are not allowed to ask students to “top-up” their vouchers if the school has a higher sticker price. Further, schools can’t pick and choose among the voucher winners. Instead, they have to take any student who holds a voucher.[ii]
Nationwide, 141,000 students use a voucher to attend a private school.[iii] Louisiana’s voucher program launched in New Orleans in 2008. It was expanded to include the entire state in 2012. Students from families with incomes below 250 percent of the federal poverty threshold are eligible for the voucher as long as they attend a public school the state has labeled as low-performing. Over half of Louisiana’s public schools fall into this category.
Researchers have long attempted to understand the effectiveness of private schools. It’s a difficult task, because parents choose their children’s schools, either by living in a certain school district or by applying to a private or charter school. The challenges are identical to those in evaluations of charter-school effectiveness: kids who attend private school are different from those who attend a public, neighborhood school, who in turn are different from those who attend a charter school.[iv] When comparing school performance, researchers struggle to distinguish differences in schools’ effectiveness from variation in the types of students who choose those schools.
A voucher lottery provides an unusual opportunity to measure the effectiveness of private schools. The lottery serves as a randomized trial, which is the gold standard of research methods. Random selection means that lottery winners and losers are identical, on average, when they apply for the voucher. Any differences that emerge after the lottery can therefore be attributed to the private-school attendance of the winners.
The results were startling. The researchers, a team of economists from Berkeley, Duke, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found that the scores of the lottery winners dropped precipitously in their first year of attending private school, compared to the performance of the lottery losers. The effects were very large: roughly a quarter of a standard deviation in math, social studies, and science. There were no effects on reading scores. On a per-year basis, these negative effects are as large as the positive effects that a similarly-designed study found for charter schools in Boston (the authors of the Louisiana study are my collaborators in the charter research).[v]
HERE'SHOW you get to the abject cluster(expletive) that exemlifies "this," and here's where you like go from "this":
1) We declare public education a failure, blaming it for not magically taking the sociological deviance amid the student population and turning it, alchemist-style, into 24-karat gold. And MIT scholarships. 2) We take a page from our highly successful Vietnam playbook: We must destroy this village in order to save it. 3) As part of the destroy-to-save process, we starve public schools of funds so we can give it to a motley crew of private and charter schools . . . because private sector. 4) We sit back and watch the chaos ensue as the private sector f***s the whole thing up worse than the public sector at $5,500 a head, if not more. 5) Wait! A solution to make the whole thing work just like we know it can! Double down -- with taxpayer money -- on what hasn't yet worked. 6) Look! A liberal! Git a rope! 7) Pay no attention to that social scientist aggregating data sets. 8)Look! Pinko-commie-fag academics talkin' trash about free enterprise and educational choice! Grab your guns! 9) We'll surely get the right charter- and private-school partners this time! 10) Well, shit. 11) Pay no attention to the poverty, chaotic lives and toxic culture of "that part of town." Public schools! Bad! 12) Avoid "that part of town." 13)MY kid's private school is pretty good -- a bargain at $9,500 a year!
14) Raise property tax on my house by $100 to fund those failed government schools?!? What, I'm made of money???
ON THE other hand . . . don't worry. Be happy. Donald Trump will fix it all.
Now that Bobby Jindal has been reduced to bouncing the rubble of his native Louisiana after nearly eight years as governor, it's time for a new challenge.
Finishing off the United States of America. We now know officially what we previously held as common knowledge -- Louisiana's worst governor ever (and believe me, that's saying something) intends to knock James Buchanan off his lowly throne as worst president of the United States. Ever.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a one-time rising star in the Republican Party now struggling to become one again, announced Wednesday that he is running for president in 2016.
Jindal made his entry into the race on Twitter, ahead of a planned formal announcement in the New Orleans suburb of Kenner later this afternoon.
There had been little doubt that the 44-year-old second-term governor would run. He has already traveled multiple times to early-primary states -- spending 45 percent of his days outside of Louisiana last year. And this year, some of Jindal's top state-government aides left to join his presidential "exploratory committee."
Jindal becomes the first Indian American to ever be a serious candidate for president. But at this point, his chances of winning the GOP nomination seem extraordinarily low.
WE CAN only hope, Washington Post. We can only hope. But there's reason to hope the worst ever governor of Louisiana hasn't a snowball's chance in Hades of becoming the worst ever president of the United States, judging by the less than auspicious goings-on on the candidate's official Facebook page.
BETWEEN the open mockery by detractors and at least one instance of a supporter calling President Obama "the Muslin Arabian prick that's in the White House," this campaign should be as entertaining as (God willing) it is doomed. Get your popcorn now. You won't want to miss a minute of this one . . . because you gotta laugh to keep from crying.
This is your anchorman. This is your anchorman on . . . meth?
At least this is your anchorman with meth on the brain. Well, this certainly explains a lot about Channel 6 here in Omaha.
I understand this clip made it to the Tonight Show. They don't call it Channel Sux for nothing. And remember, pass the meth pipe from the left-hand side. Now, name that '80s pop-culture reference. Now back to Mary Jane at the anchor desk.
1) Sometimes, understatement is not a virtue. By Channel 9's news writing standards, King Kong was larger than most apes. 2) At what point did the ability to obviously state the obvious become optional in journalism? 3) Holy crap.
Repeat after me, Omaha World-Herald online person in charge of Facebook updates:
"This is s***. This is Shinola. "This is s***. This is Shinola. "This is s***. This is Shinola."
On the other hand, that unknown editor probably is too young to know any more about Shinola than he or she knows about Garth Brooks.
ON THE third hand, one commenter is "pretty sure" the up-and-coming thing was a joke. To me, that doesn't matter. A newspaper's credibility can be trashed one lame ironic remark at a time just as well as it can by one glaring display of cluelessness at a time.
And credibility is about the only weapon "legacy media" like newspapers have left in their arsenals, particularly when they're counting on people to purchase access to their "product," which is reliable information. After all, if it's bulls*** you want, you can have your social-media fill of that for free.
Because the South, because Louisiana, because rural Tangipahoa Parish, because the fraught racial history of the South, and of Louisiana, and of rural Tangipahoa Parish, I am pretty much speechless that this is the poster for the Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival.
But here it is, going to a place Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima have never gone before. That place is Pickaninnyville. According to a story in the Advocate, the south Louisiana daily newspaper, the creator of the poster drew upon the work of a late Ponchatoula artist known for his stylistic portrayals of rural blacks in the Deep South.
The festival board’s publicist Shelley Matherne told WBRZ that the painting for the poster was selected in an open contest in which two entries were submitted. “Art is subjective; there was no intent other than to pay tribute to the festival and the strawberry industry,” she said in a statement. “This is Kalle’s interpretation of a similar world-renowned local Ponchatoula artist, now deceased, who he drew his inspiration from.”
WELL, THAT'S fair enough, and it would be pure knee-jerk speculation to say there was any malevolent intent on the part of the artist, Kalle Siekkinen, but I think it does show an abject cluelessness on the part of Siekkinen and festival organizers about the minefield that is race in the South. From what I can see of the late artist Bill Hemmerling's original work, the style of the poster is pitch-perfect in representing Hemmerling's style, but managed to hit all the wrong chords with the execution. It's rather like when Yosemite Sam tries to blow up Bugs Bunny with a booby-trapped piano. Bugs hits the wrong note and lives. A frustrated Yosemite Sam, angrily showing Bugs how to correctly play the melody, hits the right note . . . and blows himself to bits.
WHO KNEW Yosemite Sam was from Ponchatoula? I don't think it's the poster's use of African-American children is necessarily problematic, per se. It's just the little things in the artwork that turned it into something close to the perfect stereotype, and it's troubling that no one involved could see that. And that may well speak to deep-seated problems of culture and race that would merit a post unto itself . . . if not a very, very thick book.
If only the poster had depicted the kids in a different pose. If only the kids' skin wasn't absolutely, positively coal black -- which wasn't necessary to mimic a significant portion of Hemmerling's work. If only the little girl had a different hairstyle -- even just a little different, which might have been truer to Hemmerling's originals. If only the kids had been wearing hats, which would have been even truer to much of Hemmerling's paintings.
If only, if only, if only. Even so, some folks still might have been offended. But it wouldn't have been so condescendingly, head-shakingly, "Holy crap!" stereotypical.
As it stands, the poster for the Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival only could have been worse if it were for the Ponchatoula Watermelon Festival.
It says nothing good for Louisiana, or for the state of racial understanding in the South, that one is rather relieved that Ponchatoula doesn't have a watermelon festival.
